by Hilton, Matt
Rink grunted something unintelligible, and I shifted my gaze to the right to see what caused his mild concern.
‘Helicopter,’ I said unnecessarily.
A chopper was skimming through the sky, coming at a right angle to us. Had the craft been higher, or had we been still way down on the low part of the road, I wouldn’t have been able to discern what the craft was, but here I could make out the wasp-like shape and the configuration of its running lights.
‘You think it’s them?’
‘We’ll know soon enough,’ Rink said, ducking for a view past my body. ‘At least it doesn’t look like a gunship.’
‘Doesn’t mean they haven’t any guns onboard,’ I cautioned.
Our handguns were largely ineffective against a helicopter while we were driving, so I leaned in the back and grabbed the M-4, preparing it for action. There was no sign of aggression or even interest from those in the chopper yet, so I kept the machine-gun hidden down on my lap.
Rink remained at a steady speed, unalarmed and unhurried. We’d look like local night workers out on an errand.
The helicopter zoomed closer, and now I could make more out of the shape of the craft, even some dim colours – red and white – against the star-flecked heavens. Wasn’t a police or military chopper, I was pleased to note, but a commercial type that I recognised from the Bell catalogue. I’d learned more about helicopters since Harvey had acquired one as his ultimate man-toy, though he’d recently used it to bolster his income offering flying tours around his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. He’d had me out on a few pleasure flights with him, and not too long ago had also drafted his helicopter in during a rescue attempt when some of our old enemies snatched Rink. I’d been thinking about taking flying lessons, but time hadn’t allowed yet.
The chopper suddenly changed its flight path.
‘Crap,’ Rink muttered under his breath. I adjusted the M-4.
The helicopter banked towards us, then levelled out and began flying parallel to the road, and I sneaked a look to check that a door wasn’t being opened to allow the barrel of a rifle to poke out. There was no way to discern faces inside the craft, but I counted a half-dozen figures seated front and back.
‘Play it cool,’ I said, over the chopping of the blades, ‘they’re just checking us out. We don’t seem to be causing too much of a stir.’
No sooner had the words left my mouth than the chopper drifted over us, then lifted dramatically heavenward and out of sight. I could still hear the chuck-chuck-chuck sound of the rotor blades, but it diminished in volume as the helicopter headed over the nearest peak.
‘What do you think all that was about?’
‘I doubt it had anything to do with Molina. Their lights would have given them a good look at my face when I checked them out, and they didn’t seem to recognise me.’
‘Or they didn’t want you to know that they recognised you.’
‘True,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s best we keep one eye on the road behind us and another one on the sky. I’m going to keep this gun handy.’
And that’s exactly what I did for the next twenty minutes or so. The helicopter didn’t return, and I put down the close scrutiny of those onboard to nothing more than inquisitiveness. There was no hint that anyone chasing from behind had made any progress. Once I did spot running lights blinking in the sky, but they were a mile high and probably belonged to a commercial airliner. When nothing transpired, I began to relax. It’s a fault that should never affect a soldier in the field. Pain, hunger and thirst had helped keep me edgy until now, then the spike in adrenalin on seeing the helicopter heave into sight had perked me up, but now that the danger had passed that old enemy, fatigue, began to creep in. My mind was growing woolly, my eyelids so heavy I could barely prop them open. Maybe Rink was feeling the same, because he was a second too late to react as a large vehicle suddenly lurched into view to block the carriageway.
His shout of warning, and the sudden deceleration as he hit the brake, threw me forward in my seat and into wakefulness. But I was confused, and couldn’t make out what we were seconds from striking. Whatever it was, it was five times the size of the station wagon, and probably fifty times heavier. I dropped the M-4 so that I could throw my forearms over my head. Rink managed to pull the hood away from a head-on collision, and when we hit it was the right fender and passenger door that took the brunt of the impact. I was thrown around, my shoulders slamming something solid, then rebounding to hit something only slightly less concrete. The second object proved to be the window: glass chunks exploded all over me for the umpteenth time that night. The glass glittered, but then that could have simply been the flashes inside my skull. Darkness edged my vision, and the meagre contents of my stomach flipped into my throat. Blood gushed from both nostrils, from my face impacting my own arms. Shit, just when everything seemed to be going so well.
My friend was shouting, exhorting me to do something, but my head was ringing so hard I couldn’t determine his meaning. He was pulling at my left arm, shaking me, pulling me free from the slowly deflating airbag that had saved me from further injury. Then he had to concentrate on the car, as he tried to pull away from the massive vehicle blocking the road. The station wagon began to twist away from the massive wall of steel and cogs as I pushed and punched at the airbag to clear my view. Shaking some lucidity into my brain, I recognised huge wheels in a caterpillar track. Suddenly a deeper roar swallowed the scream of the Subaru’s engine. The big vehicle, which a deep part of my psyche recognised as an earth-moving machine – a Caterpillar excavator to be precise – began to pivot after us. Rink yelled again, and in reflex I ducked, just as the attached bucket on the pneumatic arm slammed down on the roof of the car. It hit above the rear seats, compacted the roof downward and more glass exploded. The Subaru was forced down on its chassis and for a second I expected the tyres to blow, or the wheel hubs to collapse off the axles. To my surprise the Subaru survived the first crushing blow. But a second followed, just as Rink was hitting reverse, and this time the colossal power of the machine struck on the bonnet, jamming the engine and the entire front end of the car towards the road surface. The back wheels lifted skyward, then dropped with a solid thud when the bucket was withdrawn for a third try at mashing us.
Our car was dead, and we would follow if I didn’t get my arse in gear.
The roof of the car was buckled, and my head had little clearance, making it difficult to bring the M-4 to bear on the driver up in the cab above the tracks. I forgot about the long gun and pulled out the Glock 20 instead. I fired through the now-open windshield, and my bullets struck sparks from the cab but to little effect.
‘Out, out, out!’
Rink’s command motivated me and I pushed and kicked at the door. It was solidly jammed in its frame, a fold of the buckled roof wedging it firmly in place. Rink’s door was also twisted out of shape, but the lock had been broken and the door burst open as he forced a way clear. I went for the next best exit. I got up on my seat, wrestling past the airbag and through the smashed windshield. I earned yet more scratches to my patchwork of earlier cuts and scrapes, but didn’t stop to worry about them. I fired again, the Glock snapping in my hand, and this time I hit window glass in the cab. I hadn’t stopped the driver, but his reaction caused him to pull on the controls and the bucket plunging down to flatten me against the metal work swept to one side and dug a furrow in the road a few feet away. I’d left the M-4 in the station wagon, and we didn’t have the luxury of retrieving it. Recovering from his near miss, the driver swung the excavator towards the car and the nearside track bit into the fender, then rode up on to the hood, crushing the car beneath its thirty-plus tons.
Rink was shooting, but not at the driver. Other men had appeared from the side road, and he engaged them. I had little time to worry about the newcomers. I was inches from being pulverised, so scrambled on to the running shelf alongside the cab. It was like riding a rhinoceros as the huge machine tore a swathe over the station wagon
, crushing it to an unrecognisable heap of buckled metal. I caught at a handle protruding from the cab wall, and avoided being thrown to the earth. The cab worked on some sort of lazy Susan set-up, allowing the cab to pivot at angles to the tracks, allowing for more dexterity with the digging arm. The driver hit levers and the cab jerked right, then left, and my boots skidded out from under me. Thankfully my grip held and I wasn’t deposited on top of the caterpillar tracks where I’d have been chewed by the interlocking links. By the time I fought to my feet, the driver had gone for a second tactic. He withdrew a gun and began firing madly, sending his bullets through the window and door at me. I felt something score my side, and a flash of agony went through me, but instinct kicked in and I returned fire, using the same reckless method as he. A scream rewarded me, but he wasn’t dead. Hearing the man cursing in Spanish, I used the source of his voice as a target for my next round. Then he was silent.
Gunshots still rang out of the darkness, but they were barely a distraction when the dying or dead driver lost control of the levers and the excavator began a rumbling path across the road, spitting out parts of the Subaru as it progressed. The bucket swung one last time, then dipped towards the ground, digging in. The forward momentum of the tracks caused the back edge of the bucket to gouge the road, but then it stuck firmly, and for a moment the huge machine worked furiously against its own power. The front end rode up, lifting on the support of its arm, before hitting the point of no return where the arm could no longer hold it aloft. The pneumatic arm buckled and collapsed, the joints shearing and sending missiles of metal shards all over the place. I was already leaping for my life, as I could see what was coming next.
I hit the road and went down on my belly, rolling on my side as the excavator plunged off the elevated road. It teetered for a few groaning seconds at the lip, before disappearing into the chasm below. Several concussive explosions and the massive rumble of earth and rocks that joined it in avalanche marked its fall. I experienced a moment of fear where the road surface trembled beneath me, and I expected it to break free from the mountainside and tumble into the valley thousands of feet below, taking me with it. But my concern was unfounded. The road held.
Now all I had to worry about was the gunmen who outnumbered Rink and me three to one.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, car headlights broke the gloom behind as those we’d avoided at Imuris came to join the fight.
Still it didn’t end there. This was a real triple dose of danger.
The fucking helicopter was also back.
Chapter 35
As secure as the telephones were at Langley, Walter Conrad couldn’t risk the opposition having infiltrated the system and placed their own monitoring devices in and around his workplace. His office was regularly swept for bugs and listening devices, but he was paranoid enough to expect that the technicians who carried out the task were the ones who would install them in the first place. They were drones, workers who took orders from those further up in the hierarchy, and could be easily coerced to feed Walter disinformation. There were many in the Company envious of Walter’s position who would not hesitate to harm him to gain an elevated status.
On record Walter was a sub-division controller, but most of his peers and superiors understood that he enjoyed a level of protection that far outweighed his official role. Some knew of his background with Arrowsake, without fully understanding the implications, and looked on him with suspicion, with distaste or downright hatred. Walter – without their knowledge – was still attached to Arrowsake, and had the ears of the cabal of powerful individuals at its head. It had long been suspected by conspiracy theorists that for all their implied importance, presidents, prime ministers and premiers did not hold genuine power. They were figureheads, poster boys set in place to reassure the masses that democracy was alive and well. Those faceless men and women who worked in the shadows held the real power. Unlike presidents and prime ministers, they did not serve an elected term; they were constant and transcended all governments, a shadow network that manipulated and moulded world affairs. The conspiracy theorists weren’t far off the mark.
What Walter’s enemies failed to realise was that he not only enjoyed the protection of the hidden government, he also had access to support the likes of which they could only dream of. For years now Walter had been employing Joe Hunter and Jared Rington to clear up problems that had to be kept off the books. It was through his influence that actions that would normally have sent both men to prison for extended terms had been sanitised, their involvement hidden and the files rubber-stamped Ultra Top Secret by the Secretary of State himself. Hunter and Rington were intrinsically good men doing despicable jobs on behalf of men who cared less about them than about those they condemned to death. But Walter was unlike his bosses. He had never been prone to demonstrations of love, but he held a special place in his heart for both men: to him they were like sons. There were jobs he’d tasked them with which he sorely regretted. He’d lied to them, manipulated them, but he’d always protected them. They were violent men, yet moral. There had been jobs for which they were not suited. On those occasions Walter had employed different assets, as he would employ one of a different mindset now.
Thomas Caspar’s agenda in Mexico was threatening Walter’s blood kin. Walter had gone to his Arrowsake bosses, confessing to them his relationship with Kirstie Long – and by virtue of it to Annie, and her mother, Miriam Decker, the retired associate deputy director of National Clandestine Services. He knew he was swapping one potential threat to his family for another, yet his priority was dealing with the issue at hand. His admission had been received favourably – although Walter came away from the meeting with a sour taste in his mouth and the feeling that nothing he’d admitted had come as a surprise to his bosses – and sanction for his plan granted.
Now Walter waited at his secluded fishing retreat in the Adirondacks. His security team was ensconced within the lodge, while Walter had taken a walk down by the river. Ordinarily when sitting on the shelf of rock jutting over the tumultuous water, he’d have with him a fishing pole and bait box. This time he held only two satellite phones, both of which he knew were clean. One phone he’d used to speak to Joe Hunter. The other was linked to a matching phone in the hands of another man. An update from either source was long overdue, and Walter sat nervously waiting for news. In all honesty, Walter wasn’t sure which one he wanted to ring first.
Chapter 36
Rink had found shelter up against the hillside, hiding behind boulders from a recent landslide. He was trading bullets with the group of men who had swarmed from cover when they thought the excavator had done its work. However, now that the huge machine had plunged into the valley they had nothing to hide behind, forcing them to find places of safety along the roadside behind similar boulders.
The only cover available to me was the crushed Subaru. Yet again I was dismally low on ammunition and forced to pull out my SIG to bolster the Glock that would run dry very soon. I crouched behind the twisted hulk of metal that had so recently been roadworthy, wistfully thinking I could still get to the M-4 if only those men weren’t shooting at me. The headlights of the reinforcements’ vehicles were growing harsh behind me, and they’d be on the scene within seconds. The helicopter hovered overhead, the downwash of its rotors whipping the air, adding to the grit and dust and bullets churning around me. The only upside was that it was making me a more difficult target to the gunmen on the ground.
‘Get your ass over here, Hunter,’ Rink yelled.
He understood how untenable my position was. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. That was only the half of it.
‘I would, but it will probably get shot off!’
‘That’s gonna happen soon enough if you don’t get the fuck outta there.’
Rink stood up, offering himself as a target. It was an incredibly brave and loyal act, or plain stupidity. Whatever, I wasn’t about to waste it. I rushed out of hiding as bullets began punchi
ng the hillside around Rink, firing blindly at those crouching in the rocks. Something, a bullet or ricochet, had nicked me earlier, but it was only one of dozens of singular pains I was experiencing, all of them blending to one dull ache that wasn’t about to slow me now. I charged in among the boulders between Rink and the others, surprised to find I was still alive. I fired one last round from the Glock and then the slide locked back. I dropped the gun – it was a hindrance now – swapping the SIG to my right hand.
‘You still alive, Rink?’
‘Is your ass still in one piece?’
‘For now.’
The headlights of approaching vehicles had become bouncing beams attached to solid objects. Three cars screeched to a halt, more coming up the hill behind them. The helicopter rode the sky on a parallel to us. Its searchlights lit the hillside with a harsh glare that deepened the shadows behind the rocks in which we hid. The six men on the ground blocked our escape that way.
‘We’re fucked,’ I said.
‘Try stating a point, will ya?’
Men were pouring out of the parked vehicles, some taking cover, others moving for the rock face to flank us.
‘How many bullets you got, Rink?’
‘Not enough to go around,’ he said. ‘Four, five maybe, I kinda lost count.’
I had three.
‘We’re fucked,’ I said once more.
‘Not yet,’ Rink said.
He fired three of his short stock of bullets at the helicopter, and sparks flashed where they struck the cockpit. In response to the surprise attack the chopper wobbled as the pilot fought with the controls, then it dipped away, dropping from sight below the roadway. I listened intently for a corresponding crash and explosion, but there was none. The chopper hove into sight again, this time a good four or five hundred yards out, well beyond effective handgun range.